Elon Musk fired anyone who didn’t respond to his email. Photo: Shutterstock
A former Twitter employee has been awarded nearly $1 million after he was wrongfully fired after failing to respond to an email from CEO Elon Musk urging workers to be “extremely tough.”
Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission earlier this week ordered X, formerly known as Twitter, to pay former senior employee Gary Rooney $907,000 (€550,000) for unfair dismissal, the most such large in the history of the country, as reported by The Guardian.
The case relates to an email sent in late 2022 by Musk, who at the time had just completed a $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.
The email, which was sent to Twitter’s then-270 employees in Ireland, outlined Musk’s vision for the company under his reign.
“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be incredibly strong,” Musk said in his email to employees.
“This means working long hours with high intensity. Only outstanding performance will constitute a passing grade.”
The email also asked employees to confirm their commitment to the new version of Twitter by clicking “yes” within 24 hours.
Those who did not confirm this were understood to have resigned and offered three months’ severance pay.
Rooney, who was Twitter’s source-to-pay director, did not respond to Musk’s email and three days later received an email acknowledging his “decision to resign” and confirming the acceptance of a voluntary offer of separation.
This was disputed by Rooney in an email a week later, where he said he had “not indicated on Twitter that I am resigning from my position, nor have I seen any separation agreement, let alone accepted one”.
Rooney took the matter to Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission, arguing that he had been unfairly dismissed and that his lack of response to Musk’s email did not constitute him leaving voluntarily.
‘Not OK’
At the five-day hearing in the case, Twitter’s senior director of human resources, Lauren Wegman, said that of the 270 Irish employees who were sent the email, 35 people did not click yes, and that this led to their resignation from the company.
But that was rejected by Commission judge Michael MacNamee, who found that the 24-hour deadline included in Musk’s email was not “reasonable” and that Rooney’s failure to respond by that deadline could not constitute a resignation. him from his role.
The commission ordered Twitter to pay Rooney $577,000 (€350,131) for lost remuneration from January 2023 to May 2024 and $330,000 (€200,000) for future lost earnings.
Rooney’s lawyer, Barry Kenny, welcomed the decision and its “clear and unequivocal finding that [his] the client did not resign from his job, but was unfairly dismissed from his job”.
“It is not right for Mr. Musk, or indeed any large company, to treat employees in this country in such a manner.
“The record price reflects the seriousness and gravity of the matter,” Kenny said.
Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk moved to lay off about 4,000 employees from his worldwide workforce.
Those job cuts included a reduction of nearly 80 percent of security engineers at the company and cutting nearly 80 percent of its global public policy staff.
In July 2023, Twitter was officially rebranded as X, with Musk pursuing a dream to turn the platform into an “app for everything”.
